2. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

This FAQ only reflects the installation guide in its present form, and
various many queries which were present in the earlier versions have
been edited and left out. If you have something to ask which is not
listed herein, shoot an email at <sghosh.oxon at yahoo
dot co dot uk>What
is the aim/purpose of this guide?

The
information in this guide can be used for installing
and configuring three
different OSes on a single hard disk of a computer.
Firstly, Windows XP is installed,
then OpenSolaris
2008.11 is installed and finally, we round-off the
guide by installing CentOS 5.2

Why
have you
used 3 OSes for this guide?

I
personally wouldn't want any more! I do have a system which has Windows XP, FreeBSD,
Ubuntu
& OpenSolaris installed, but the
overall installation, configuration and post-installation configuration
in the multi-boot loader is too
cumbersome to exemplify in a written manner. Thus, I thought
of
sticking to three OSes.

Did
you
yourself try out the steps mentioned
in this guide?

Yes, I did test each and every step mentioned in this
guide on my personal computer systems. Once successful, I often
replicate the entire procedure on other systems of varying
configurations to re-check and validate errors, if any.

All
your installations are
"CD/DVD-ROM" based installation types. What about "Ethernet",
"FTP", "HTTP", "NFS" installation types?

This guide
has been kept as simple as possible. It is intended for all types of
users, ranging from intermediate Linux users to the most experienced
UNIX experts. Since, NFS, HTTP, FTP and other such installation types
usually require
network access with servers up and running, which is impossible for an
ordinary home-user to have access to, I have only covered the
CD/DVD-ROM based installation types.

Why
would anyone ever need to run 3 OSes on the same hard disk
of a computer?

For lots
of reasons. Fun, for learning new installing and booting
methodologies, for gaining inside knowledge of multi-booting,
partitioning schemes, how boot loaders operate and so on, or simply
because you just cannot afford 2 separate hard disk drives for the 3
different OSes you want to tinker with. Last but not the
very
least, if you do wish, you can always install and configure your
computer system with 3 varying OSes installed in 2
separate hard
disks. Not only is it highly recommendable, but mandatory if
you have significant data in question.

Using CentOS is virtually same as
using Red
Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) which is virtually
same as using earlier builds of Red Hat Linux. CentOS is a community-supported,
freely-available OS which is a 100%
compatible rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise
Linux. Since most of my past Linux projects and work in general has
been related to RHEL and currently with CentOS; CentOS has been
considered over other Linux distros. If you are using any
other Linux distro, follow the same steps by replacing with adequate
steps from your specific Linux distro. If something fails, shoot an
email at <sghosh.oxon
at yahoo dot co dot uk>

OpenSolaris
is an open source OS based on Sun Microsystems'
commercial version of UNIX, Solaris.
OpenSolaris is gaining wide popularity amongst students, Web 2.0
developers and deployment, open source OS developers worldwide, since
apart from the source code which is 100%
freely available, documentation
& support
is readily available as well. Since the motto of writing this document
is to keep it as open-source and thereby as 'free' as possible,
OpenSolaris has been chosen over other commercial versions of
UNIX.

I
installed 3 OSes on my computer; and then unfortunately,
something went wrong somewhere. My hard disk crashed and I
lost
all the data. Would you be kind enough to take the responsibility for
all this mess?

Use the information in this guide at your own risk.
Do not
try this on your primary laptop or PC, and if you do, then backup any
significant data that you maybe having. You have been warned. If your
hard disk does crash, and you do end up losing valuable data, I shall
not take responsibility for the mess.

I have Red Hat, FreeBSD and OpenBSD distributions and/or releases. Will
they work?

I am sure they would with a few modifications at
places. All steps mentioned in this guide
should behave in a normal manner if you are using Kernel 2.2.x or
higher (for Linux). For FreeBSD users, if you are using not earlier
than
4.X-RELEASES, there should not be any problems whatsoever.

My
PC dual-boots WinXP and Linux. Is there any way to check out
Solaris/OpenSolaris on Windows without actually installing
the OS?

I am not very clear as to how GRUB helps in booting the 3 OSes. What is the functionality of a boot loader anyway?

A PC when switched on can only execute program code found in
ROM and RAM which does not include bigger software like OSes. Thus, a
small program stored in ROM is executed which loads the
bigger data set and programs (usually the OS) which are then
executed from RAM. This small program which loads the bigger
program and data into RAM and prepares the computer system for
subsequent usage is the boot loader or bootstrap loader.
Though it may sound very simple, the detailed functionality of a
boot loader is indeed very complex and needs minute
understanding of the underlying architecture of the computer system
that it prepares to bootstrap. I would encourage everyone to read these
documents over and over again: